A new technique is better than gene therapy for curing sickle cell disease, Elizabeth Tracey reports

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Headlines have announced that sickle cell disease can be cured with gene therapy. Now there’s a better way developed at Johns Hopkins and other centers around the world, using what are called ‘half-matched donors,’ to give new bone marrow to people with sickle cell disease. Richard Brodsky, a sickle cell expert at Hopkins, explains that the new method doesn’t require myeloablation, where someone’s bone marrow is destroyed.

Brodsky: Sickle cell patients can't tolerate myeloablative therapy. Myeloablation for transplant was determined what a healthy person's organs can withstand. These aren't healthy people, they can't withstand that. But what your listeners are really going to want to hear is hey we already heard gene therapy’s here, that's the answer to everything. Gene therapy is myeloablative, this is non myeloablative so more patients are eligible. Gene therapy is outrageously expensive 2 to $3,000,000 a patient. That half matched transplant in an adult is roughly 300,000.           :32 

Brodsky says there are many other advantages to the new technique in addition to dramatically reduced cost. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.